Organic Chemistry- When should I take this?

[Conflagration]

Hello, everybody. I haven't been on here in a while. But the facelift is nice. ^^

I'm having a miserable time organizing when I should take pre-requisites.

I have AP credit for my Basic Biology(4 CR) and both General Chemistries(8 CR). I took Organic Chemistry 1 last year, got my C, and walked out of there with an eighth of the bravado I did when I walked in(because that's probably the worst introduction to college sciences on the planet, really).

I was sort of avoiding biology and chemistry like the plague, and after that, I had convinced myself for a while that I didn't want to do anything health related.

Well, you see how convincing that was.

I switched my major to Mathematics, which is conveniently buffing my sGPA. So there's a silver lining for everything, I guess.

My main issue is that I can take Organic Chemistry 2 this Spring, but with a professor with a lot of notoriety attached to her name, it's a little daunting. I've heard horror stories that she just writes mechanisms and has no clue what they are or how to explain them.

The professor I took Organic Chemistry 1 with went on a short sabbatical and is returning to teach Organic Chemistry 2 next Spring.

I'm a sophomore now, and I have an elective that I can throw a biology or a chemistry in for the upcoming semester.

What should I do? Self-teach Organic Chemistry 2 to myself next semester, or wait a year and put something else in that slot?

Currently:
3.0 BCPM GPA, 3.096 cGPA
Projected:
3.4 BCPM GPA, ~3.3 cGPA for the upcoming semester.

Thanks for reading my egregiously long post!

Any advice would be helpful.

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[BNA87]

Do you have any schools in your area that do OChem 1 and 2 in the summer? That's how I did them and it really helped. It's totally intensive (be prepared for no life) but 8 weeks later I finished both.
Honestly OChem 2 was easier than OChem 1 in my opinion so I think you could teach yourself but I'd probably wait for a different professor since you're just a sophomore and trying to bring up your GPA.

 

[Conflagration]

My university does offer Organic Chemistry 2 in the summer, but I'm riding on a half-tuition scholarship and federal loans to pay off my Fall and Spring tuition. And my university charges almost double per credit hour for summer tuition.

And the GPA is something that I know I need to raise, so I'll keep that in mind.

Thank you for your reply!

 

[Rainheart]

What about a community college during the summer? I took Physics during my summers instead of taking them at my university due to the awful professors there.

 

[twelvetigers]

What about a community college during the summer? I took Physics during my summers instead of taking them at my university due to the awful professors there.

I can't speak for *any* other universities, but OkSU counts orgo as an upper division type class and therefore it must be taken at a 4-year institution and not a community college.

That's as much detail about that as I know, and the only school I know it for, but I would make sure this wouldn't be an issue before pursuing it.

 

[Rainheart]

I can't speak for *any* other universities, but OkSU counts orgo as an upper division type class and therefore it must be taken at a 4-year institution and not a community college.

That's as much detail about that as I know, and the only school I know it for, but I would make sure this wouldn't be an issue before pursuing it.

Good idea to double check on the schools you might want to apply to. The ones I did had no problem with my physics at a CC.

 

[Conflagration]

Would that be considered acceptable? I might look into doing that. And it'd be awesome if I could just pay for the classes outright instead of all these loans.

Thanks to the both of you for replying!

 

[onisteverina]

I'm not sure how you learn.. but for me, I pretty much taught myself o chem while studying. I couldn't absorb ANYTHING in class, so I basically locked myself in my room for a year and spent a good amount of time reading the text and practicing on my own. Making cheat sheets really helped me. I had a pretty horrible teacher (couldn't explain any reasoning behind the mechanisms that she would write.. would tell us something wouldn't be covered on the midterm and than 1 of the 5 questions/pages on the midterm would be on exactly that) for o chem 2 but still ended up getting a good grade.

 

[FutureAnimalDoc]

I was in a similar situation when I took organic chemistry. I had a really good professor for ochem I, and then the following semester another professor was teaching it. I knew from speaking with tons of other students that she would make lots of mistakes and just write random mechanisms on the board...many of which were incorrect. I was faced with the dilemma of waiting a whole year to take ochem II with the professor I had before, or to take it the following semester while ochem I was fresh in my mind. I decided to just take it instead of waiting, and I really wish that I hadn't! I along with more than half of my class failed the course. 🙁
Out of ~50 students only 10 students passed. This hit my GPA pretty hard, and what's worse is that this happened within my last 45 units so it will most likely affect me as vet schools review my academic history. It also will depend on how many units you are taking, and what other courses you plan to take with it. If you struggle with ochem like I did, you may want to take easier classes alongside it. I re-took it and did well with another professor, but if I could do it over again I would have just waited and taken it with the professor I was familiar with. Best of luck and I hope everything works out for you in the end! 🙂

 

[Conflagration]

For my learning style, it really depends on the subject. I have been able to teach AP Biology to myself, but Organic Chem is a lot more difficult. I'm just a little overcautious since I have NVLD, so just visual would drive me up the wall and make me want to maim things. I've looked at Khan Academy some, which was nice, but it was sort of lacking the depth(or I didn't understand what the professor was looking for) that I needed.

I'm cautious since it's already been a year since I had the first one. I'm not sure if I could walk in two years after the first one and do well in the class.

It seems that the consensus is that I should delay taking the class. What should I put in its place? Cell Bio is called Cell Hell here, so I'm not exactly looking to jump into that. I've been debating Zoology, but there's Ornithology that looks mad cool.

 

[FutureAnimalDoc]

A website that really helped refresh my memory for ochem was Educator.com. You can subscribe and pay monthly, and cancel at any time. So there is no contract, but they have professors that you can watch online that teach the entire course, give explanations, and examples. It helped me out tremendously! So if you are interested, it was a great resource for me. At my university Cell Biology is a pre-req for most other upper division Bio classes, so I would recommend looking into what courses are pre-reqs for classes you need to be able to take in the near future. I took Parasitology, Immunology, and Marine Biology as some of my elective courses, but Zoo, and Ornithology would be great as well!

 

[WillowLeaf]

I think having a good professor makes ochem a ton easier, especially if it's not your favorite subject. I had a professor who taught us the mechanisms with all the reasoning and why's of what we were doing. He actually taught that reasoning behind mechanisms so well that he put a brand-new (to us) mechanism question on an exam and most of us could figure out the whole mechanism just by knowing how the molecules would act. The class was still challenging, but it made a lot more sense and wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. If it was me, I would probably delay ochem until the better professor returned.

Maybe if you have extra time/money in your schedule, you could retake ochem 1 when the other professor returns? That way it would be fresh in your mind for ochem 2, and you might learn the basics from ochem 1 better too. It seemed to me that ochem built on previous material a lot, but I might be remembering wrong. (I have no idea how vet schools view repeated courses, so please correct me if that's bad advice!)

 

[ChittyBang]

My Orgo professor was horrible. Really horrible. I definitely taught myself, and Klein's "Organic Chemistry As a Second Language" saved my ass. It's a little yellow book that rocks 🙂

 

[Cyndia]

So I was similar to onisteverina, where I didn't absorb that much in class and mostly taught myself. Orgo came naturally to me though, so I was lucky. My teachers were decent (neither terrible nor amazing) so that didn't really impact me.

But anyways - If you think you might struggle with orgo, I'd say don't make it any harder on yourself, and just wait to take it with a better teacher. However on the flip side, having to wait a year might be terrible if you forget a lot of orgo 1. I did 1 and 2 sequentially, and personally I didn't retain much of it a whole year later and would have struggled if I'd waited to take it. You'd have to definitely study a bit before starting orgo 2 to refresh your memory for it, so I would keep that in mind if you decide to wait till next spring.

 

[Conflagration]

Ironically enough, I've been tutoring a friend of mine in most of the topics from Orgo 1 since she has this teacher. And she's a pre-pharm girl, and she's getting kicked by Orgo 1. She's on the C/D border(but that's before the curve, if there is one, but there's a lot of people failing it right now). But Chemistry in general is what she loves, so watching her get slammed is incredibly disheartening.

The professor's main problems is that she tends to go on tangents when she can't explain a mechanism, and her tangent is normally another mechanism(and because of this, the notes don't really make much sense). She threw E/Z stoichiometry, Markovnikov products, and nucleophilic/electrophilic attacks at them right before the second test(and Newman projections and general R/S before the first one). And because of this, the labs don't match what they're doing in class.

Truth be told, I'm not sure if I'll ever get to a place where Orgo will be my snuggle friend, but I haven't forgot all of it. And I'm looking to get a B for the second one(I would obviously not complain if I got an A but I'm going to be realistic), to show an upward trend and that taking a break from the hard sciences was used to reignite a passion for them.

The visual component is what really throws me for a loop. It's hard for me to conceptualize molecules in space. I can understand the spatial reasoning behind it to an extent, but when there's more than four carbons and two stereocenters, I'll probably be there all day.

 

[ChittyBang]

Get that book I mentioned. It really works.

 

[Conflagration]

If Klein is the last name, he might be the guy who wrote our textbook.

But I will definitely try to see if the library has it on Monday. So I know that if I'm good and wait long enough, I can snipe it for my friend in Orgo 1 right now. 👍

 

[ChittyBang]

It's a small paperback, and I think you can find a pdf online. It was handed down to me from a friend in vet school, who got it from someone she knew... I'd give you mine if you lived by me 😛

 

[anesthtc]

just keep in mind that several of the vet schools want some higher level courses that have organic as a pre-req. so make sure you give yourself enough time to take them if you are serious about applying.

 

[Cyndia]

The visual component is what really throws me for a loop. It's hard for me to conceptualize molecules in space. I can understand the spatial reasoning behind it to an extent, but when there's more than four carbons and two stereocenters, I'll probably be there all day.

Modelling kits will be your best friend then! Get a good one, the one that came with my textbook package they asked us to buy was crap, so I went out and splurged on a slightly nicer one. Can't for the life of me remember the brand though, sorry! But I remember messing around with that for ages in orgo 1, didn't use it much in orgo 2 but it really helped me out in the beginning when I was also struggling with conceptualizing the molecules.

 

[Conflagration]

That's a fair point, too- I need some classes that have Organic as a pre-req.

But I really need to look into a modeling kit.

 

[that redhead]

Absolutely get Organic Chemistry as a Second Language. The first one was better, but the second is good too.

As for the class itself, I'm of the opinion that most organic chemistry professors are awful, and most people manage to get through it in some way or another. Sometimes I've gone into a class thinking the professor is going to be awful and it isn't as bad as the gossip made it out to be. As for the time between the classes, I found OC2 to be pretty unrelated to OC1 (at least at our school). So that plus keeping it fresh through tutoring likely means you'll be fine.

Personally, I'd get it done sooner rather than later to leave yourself room to take some of the upper level classes that may require OC2 as a pre-req (biochemistry at my school, dunno about others). Another option is re-take OC1 for a better grade and OC2 whenever available after that. Not saying that you need to do that, but it's an option with your lower GPA.

 

[Conflagration]

I think I might try to bite the bullet and just do it. I have a lot of friends taking it next semester so we can band together and commiserate.

A lot of my problems with Orgo 1 was that I was a stupid freshman and thought it'd be like Gen Chem which I tested out of.

I think I can actually do it now.